Analysis Survivor Siegfried Sassoon
Meynen Joke : Analysis Siegfried Sassoon : Survivors
In “Survivors” Sassoon confronts the readers with the harsh reality of war. He gives an image of life in war with descriptions of the traumatizing effects that war has on soldiers . On top of that he also indirectly criticizes the opinion of the people at home by using irony and sarcasm.
In the first stanza , Sassoon gives the reader misleading hope. He says “No doubt they’ll soon get well” . But in the following line , he breaks this hope. He describes “the stammering , shock and strain and disconnected talk”. With this he wants to emphasise that the victims wouldn’t get well soon unlike what a lot of people thought. This underlying criticism is also found in the following line : “of course they’re longing to go out again”. The people thought that the soldiers were dying to go back to the war. Again he demolishes this thought by explaining that the men were practically lame “learning to walk”. Another sarcastic comment can be found on line five “they’ll soon forget their haunted nights”. Once again this statement is a contradiction to the next line : “dreams that drip with murder and subjection to the ghosts of their friends”. After the war soldiers were often haunted by all the things that they saw or did when being in the war. Soldiers became murderers when in war and they also saw a lot of their friends getting killed. If their nights are filled with images like that , how will they ever be able to forget that? “And they’ll be proud of glorious war that shattered all their pride”. In this stanza there’s an enormous contradiction. The people say that the soldiers will one day be proud of what they achieved whilst in war , only to remember all the pain they had to go through. So in reality the glorious war that they fought did nothing else but shatter their pride.
Sassoon ends the poem by saying that the proud men that came to war returned as children who had to learn
In “Survivors” Sassoon confronts the readers with the harsh reality of war. He gives an image of life in war with descriptions of the traumatizing effects that war has on soldiers . On top of that he also indirectly criticizes the opinion of the people at home by using irony and sarcasm.
In the first stanza , Sassoon gives the reader misleading hope. He says “No doubt they’ll soon get well” . But in the following line , he breaks this hope. He describes “the stammering , shock and strain and disconnected talk”. With this he wants to emphasise that the victims wouldn’t get well soon unlike what a lot of people thought. This underlying criticism is also found in the following line : “of course they’re longing to go out again”. The people thought that the soldiers were dying to go back to the war. Again he demolishes this thought by explaining that the men were practically lame “learning to walk”. Another sarcastic comment can be found on line five “they’ll soon forget their haunted nights”. Once again this statement is a contradiction to the next line : “dreams that drip with murder and subjection to the ghosts of their friends”. After the war soldiers were often haunted by all the things that they saw or did when being in the war. Soldiers became murderers when in war and they also saw a lot of their friends getting killed. If their nights are filled with images like that , how will they ever be able to forget that? “And they’ll be proud of glorious war that shattered all their pride”. In this stanza there’s an enormous contradiction. The people say that the soldiers will one day be proud of what they achieved whilst in war , only to remember all the pain they had to go through. So in reality the glorious war that they fought did nothing else but shatter their pride.
Sassoon ends the poem by saying that the proud men that came to war returned as children who had to learn